Widely varying giant Goos-Hänchen shifts from Airy beams at nonlinear interfaces

Spatio-temporal propagation dynamics of Airy plasmon pulses

We investigate numerically the evolution of a particular type of non-diffracting pulsed plasmonic beam called Airy plasmon pulses. A suitable diffraction grating is obtained by optimizing a grating (e.g., [Phys. Rev. Lett.107, 116802 (2011)10.1103/PhysRevLett.107.116802]) for maximum generation bandwidth and efficiency to excite ultrashort Airy plasmon pulses. The optimization process is based on Airy and non-Airy plasmons contributions from the diffraction grating. The time-averaged Airy plasmon pulse generated from the grating shows a bent trajectory and quasi non-diffracting properties similar to CW excited Airy plasmons. A design-parameter-dependent geometrical model is developed to explain the spatio-temporal dynamics of the Airy plasmon pulses, which predicts the pulse broadening in Airy plasmon pulses due to non-Airy plasmons emerging from the grating. This model provides a parametric design control for the potential engineering of temporally focused 2D non-diffracting pulsed plasmonic beams.

Vector wave analysis of Airy beams upon reflection and refraction

As a kind of typical self-accelerating laser beam, Airy beams have attracted much attention due to their fascinating properties and various potential applications. In this work, we carry out a full vector wave analysis of Airy beams upon reflection and refraction. A hybrid method based on the angular spectrum representation and vector potential in the Lorenz gauge is introduced to describe the vectorial structure of Airy beams upon reflection and refraction. The explicit analytical expressions for the electric and magnetic field components of arbitrarily incident Airy beams reflected and refracted at an air-medium interface are derived in detail. Local-field patterns and magnitude profiles with different parameters are displayed. The analytical formulas obtained in this work can be practically applied to explore the local dynamical characteristics, including the energy, momentum, spin, and orbital angular momentum of Airy beams upon reflection and refraction.

Goos-Hänchen shifts for Airy beams impinging on graphene-substrate surfaces

The spatial (Δ_GH) and the angular (Θ_GH) Goos-Hänchen (GH) shifts for an Airy beam impinging upon a weakly absorbing medium coated with the monolayer graphene are theoretically investigated. The influence of the GH shift on the incident angle, the incident wavelength, the Fermi energy, and the decay factors of Airy beams is discussed. A significant magnification of Δ_GH, which reaches its maximum of about three orders of wavelengths, is predicted. Our findings may provide a feasible tool to obtain a huge Δ_GH in experiments.

Spatial Goos-Hänchen and Imbert-Fedorov shifts of rotational 2-D finite energy Airy beams

Expressions of Goos-Hänchen and Imbert-Fedorov shifts of rotational 2-D finite energy Airy beams are introduced in this paper. The influences of the second-order terms of the reflection coefficient on the spatial Goos-Hänchen shift (GHS) and spatial Imbert-Fedorov shift (IFS) of rotational 2-D finite energy Airy beams are theoretically and numerically investigated at the surface between air and weakly absorbing medium for the first time. It is found that the axial symmetry of the initial field of beams has huge influences on GHS and IFS and both of the GHS and IFS can be controlled by adjusting the rotation angle of the initial field distribution.

Engineering deceleration and acceleration of soliton emitted from Airy pulse with quadratic phase modulation in optical fibers without high-order effects

Soliton propagation direction can be engineered in optical fibers in the presence of high-order effects (HOEs). It is well known that Raman effects can decelerate the soliton. Here we investigate the manipulation of the deceleration or acceleration of soliton emitted from Airy pulse whose spectrum is imposed an initial quadratic phase modulation (QPM) in optical fibers in the absence of HOEs. We show that, under the action of the anomalous second-order dispersion (SOD) and Kerr nonlinearity, Airy pulse with QPM is able to emit soliton with acceleration or deceleration depending on whether the QPM is negative or positive, and at a rate that is determined by the magnitude of QPM. The reason is that the acceleration behaviors of incident Airy pulse is altered depending on whether SOD and QPM have the same or opposite signs. Our study shows the possibility of controlling and manipulating the soliton propagation and interaction in optical fibers without HOEs, by purposely choosing appropriate QPM parameter of an Airy pulse.

On the asymptotic evolution of finite energy Airy wave functions

In general, there is an inverse relation between the degree of localization of a wave function of a certain class and its transform representation dictated by the scaling property of the Fourier transform. We report that in the case of finite energy Airy wave packets a simultaneous increase in their localization in the direct and transform domains can be obtained as the apodization parameter is varied. One consequence of this is that the far-field diffraction rate of a finite energy Airy beam decreases as the beam localization at the launch plane increases. We analyze the asymptotic properties of finite energy Airy wave functions using the stationary phase method. We obtain one dominant contribution to the long-term evolution that admits a Gaussian-like approximation, which displays the expected reduction of its broadening rate as the input localization is increased.